Michael Kimmelman in the NYT today has an interesting piece about how European arts institutions, once lavishly supported by the governments, are now having to search for private benefactors.
GLYNDEBOURNE, privately supported Opera House in the Sussex Downs….
Kimmelman writes “Even when government-sponsored culture begins with grand ambitions, the machinery of state can grind it down. Just as Georges Pompidou, France’s president, devised the Pompidou museum, his successor François Mitterrand opened the Orsay as part of an attempt to guarantee his own cultural legacy, and then Jacques Chirac did the same with the Branly museum for non-Western cultures. (In France presidents are aspiring Medicis, with public money.) In those cases — politics twisted how objects are displayed, as artifacts of a dubious revisionist history at Orsay and, even if unwittingly, as exhibits in a colonialist zoo at Branly — they also produced shopping-mall-style museums.
The point? Government patronage is no panacea in Europe, admirable and beautiful though it may be in principle and sometimes in reality. Private patronage, meanwhile, can have its distinct advantages. True, strings are usually attached. But a variety of donors tend to allow an institution more independence and flexibility, more lightness on its feet.”
He doesn’t mention the long running success of Glyndebourne, the opera house in the Sussex downs. John Christie, who owned an organ building company, made his country house into an opera house in 1934 and it was an immediate success. Opera lovers dressed in black tie were happy to take an afternoon train to the country, often carrying a picnic hamper with them. After World War II, Christie asked John Maynard Keynes, the economist who headed the Arts Council, for money and was turned down. Keynes wanted the money for the state supported Royal Opera House.
Glyndebourne has gone from strength to strength even as the Royal Opera House has often struggled. With private support, it has been remade over and over far more efficiently than the Royal Opera House which has been bogged down by politics and bureaucracy.
Bravo. Finally someone who will tell it like it is. Let the Arts survive with patronage NOT goverment support… OOOOPS… I can feel the daggers in my back as I write… Toronto has spent billions building new temples to the Arts… who is attending? We have a new opera house, renovated symphonic hall, new art gallery, new museum and countless smaller regional theatre … not to mention the thired encarnaton of the House that Beer Built…aka O’Keefe Centre… now SONY.. But who goes? Are they sold out? Are they flourishing? NOT! And the imposition of government guidelines has done nothing but given a few Canadians.. (and I MEAN A FEW) some cash for mediocre creativity..C’mon.. now is it worth it?
I don’t think a nation should devoid itself of culture.. NOT AT ALL… Just think goverment need not support it by employing hundreds of dillitents at outrageous salaries to determnine who deserves more tax payers’ money.. Find a patron… Find donors,…. Concentrate on your product and raise it to a level deserving of audiences. You might then be successful